Category Archives: car

I keep seeing so much about the high cost of gas, gas tax schemes and who is to blame.  Well, I need to toss my nickel into the fray and clear up a few things…

Let’s take the last one first, Who’s to blame? If you listen to many in front of the media’s cameras, it seems that since the oil companies are making record profits, it must be them.  Or, since George Bush and Dick Cheney used to be in the oil business, it must be them.  And there is always China…

But, here is the problem.  We don’t have enough domestic supply.  We could.  But we don’t.  There are a couple of things of note that we don’t hear often enough.  A certain portion of ANWR (the 10-02 area) was set aside by legislation as an area to explore for oil… and that area is about the size of Hartsfield Airport… in an area the size of Georgia.  Or about the size of a football sitting on the on the sideline of a football field.
photo credit: Erika Hall

The economically recoverable oil could replace the bulk of middle eastern oil we import for about four decades.

If we add to that the oil that we know of on the continental shelf, in the Florida Staights (that Cuba and Venezuela are getting ready to drill for… sideways under our territorial waters), the Gulf Coast of Florida and the oil off the CA coast, we could cut of most if not all unfriendly oil, provide hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs and move towards energy independence.

But Democrats in Congress, at the behest of groups like the Sierra Club block the votes on the issue.

Schemes to drop the gas tax sound nice, but they won’t really help.  Oddly, I have to side with Obama on this one.  McCain’s plan wouldn’t actually address anything.  Clinton’s plan is downright stupid.  She wants to “pay” for the tax holiday by levying a special tax on the oil companies.  Since the gas tax is actually more than the profit per gallon, the oil companies would have to raise the price to offset Hillary’s special tax…  Sounds nice, but it is stupid.
photo credit: qqqnl

We have a serious energy issue in this country.  Corn isn’t the answer.  Slogans from special interest groups aren’t the answer.  Wind and solar sound nice, but cost WAY more than coal and nuclear power.  Oil isn’t going away, and it’s high time we start going after our own.